Rationality gone mad!

[Diogenes' Dog]

Most of the arguments on this forum are about the irrationality of theism/atheism. Atheists seem to believe that religion has been proved wrong because it offends occum's razor, and there is no objective evidence for belief in God, which is therefore "irrational" or "unscientific". Meanwhile many theists seem equally solid in the certainty that the cosmological argument, and arguments from design (e.g. invoking information theory). I think we are mad in believing that logical deduction based on objective empirical data is the ONLY source of truth, or that it will ever subsume this dialectic.

What both sides are forgetting is that religion is based on FAITH, not on rational deduction. Belief in God is a plunge into the unknown and remains scientifically ungraspable because science builds only on knowns from the "ground up". God is not a phenomenum in this universe, but is experienced subjectively through a leap of faith. Subjectivity is truth.

Anyway, all this was proposed by Kierkegaard over 150 years ago... (quote from Wikipedia)

Kierkegaard has been called a Christian existentialist, a theologian, the Father of Existentialism, a literary critic, a humourist, a psychologist, a poet, and a philosopher. Two of his main ideas are the "leap of faith" and "subjectivity". The leap of faith is his conception of how an individual would believe in God, or how a person would act in love. It is not so much a rational decision, as it is a rejection of rationality in favour of something more uncanny, that is, faith. As such he thought that to have faith is at the same time to have doubt. So, for example, for one to truly have faith in God, one would also have to doubt that God exists; the doubt is the rational part of a person's thought, without which the faith would have no real substance. Doubt is an essential element of faith, an underpinning. In plain words, to believe or have faith that God exists, without ever having doubted God's existence or goodness, would not be a faith worth having. For example, it takes no faith to believe that a pencil or a table exists, when one is looking at it and touching it. In the same way, to believe or have faith in God is to know that one has no perceptual or any other access to God, and yet still has faith in God.

Kierkegaard also stressed the importance of the self, and the self's relation to the world as being grounded in self-reflection and introspection. He argued in Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments that "subjectivity is truth" and "truth is subjectivity"; that is, that the self is the ultimate governor of what life is and what life means. He also believed in the infinity of the self, explaining that the self could not be fully known or understood, because it is infinite. In this way his thought reflects the Christian idea of the soul, which is immortal; but Kierkegaard was not speaking about the immortality of the self as much as the depth of the soul, of a person's being.

So, is subjectivity truth? Is a "leap of faith" irrational?

 

[KennyJC]

I don't think atheists forget that religion is simply based on faith at all. The thing that gets non believers annoyed is the fact that simple faith is portrayed as though based on historic fact. I don't think the Bible being fact is an example of doubt mixing with faith.

Politics and education are distorted in most countries due to faith being portrayed as fact by those with their agendas.

On the other hand those who simply have faith are propping up all of the fundies in society who can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

 

[redarmy11]

I think atheists' point is that there is no more justification for putting your faith in an invisible, intangible God than there is for believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Without empirical evidence to base the decision on how can you judge the validity of your beliefs?

 

[Light Travelling]

Without empirical evidence to base the decision on how can you judge the validity of your beliefs?

Judge by subjective experience!

Do you trust others more than yourself? why - because society has conditioned you to do so... and subsequently removed your freedom to be who you really are.

Kant's 'transcendental idealism' will tell you that although objects objectively exist in the universe, we can never experience them or understand them objectively, as the experience is always filtered through our senses and processed by mind.

It is because all our senses and minds are largely similar and through conditioning by society from an early age, that we succumb to the illusion that we are really capable of perceiving the phenomonal world objectively.

(buddhism has basically taught this for thousands of years)

 

[Light Travelling]

Politics and education are distorted in most countries due to faith being portrayed as fact by those with their agendas.

.

Politics and education are distorted in most countries due to the belief in the illusion of an objectively existing reality as perceived through the senses and mind.

 

[Diogenes' Dog]

I think atheists' point is that there is no more justification for putting your faith in an invisible, intangible God than there is for believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Without empirical evidence to base the decision on how can you judge the validity of your beliefs?

Light Travelling put it very succinctly.

IPU and FSM - nice parodies, but over-simplistic. They parody the atheist's misperception of theists as seeing the world like them (i.e. from some non-existent objectified standpoint), but with some extra (nonsensical) belief bolted on.

That's why "subjectivity is truth". If no-one had ever directly experienced profoundly life-changing transpersonal and transcendant states, states of "samhadi" etc. as a result of prayer, meditation, contemplation etc., there might be little evidence that "God" (or "Buddha nature") exists. The fact that people reliably do keeps religion alive.

Sure, you cannot deduce the existence of God, that's why the leap of faith is required.

I don't think atheists forget that religion is simply based on faith at all. The thing that gets non believers annoyed is the fact that simple faith is portrayed as though based on historic fact. I don't think the Bible being fact is an example of doubt mixing with faith.

Politics and education are distorted in most countries due to faith being portrayed as fact by those with their agendas.

I agree with you Kenny, I think Kierkegaard is probably addressing those "fundies" when he talks about doubt being essential to faith. Protestantism seems to have gone off down the track of trying to read the Bible like a science text book i.e. every word is literally true. Allegory and critical interpretation are out of fashion.

On the other hand those who simply have faith are propping up all of the fundies in society who can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

Perhaps they are providing an alternative for those who abhor dogmatic religion, but are thirsty for a spiritual way...? I know a number of people who became Buddhists because they felt like that.

 

[audible]

Judge by subjective experience!

no not judge just assumed, those experiences will only ever be your experiences, thus just hearsay to anybody else.

Do you trust others more than yourself? why - because society has conditioned you to do so... and subsequently removed your freedom to be who you really are.

no, thats the whole point of being atheist, is to not allow, others to rule you and especially not a imaginary/subjective god/gods.

Kant's 'transcendental idealism' will tell you that although objects objectively exist in the universe, we can never experience them or understand them objectively, as the experience is always filtered through our senses and processed by mind.

then kants a c**t, so let me understand this in laymans terms, you and me are both looking at a tree, using all our sense, I see and feel a tree, but you see a metal girder with wire branches. so even though I can smell and touch and see the wood, and even hear and taste it if I wish, I can never experience it, well what else am I doing with it.

It is because all our senses and minds are largely similar and through conditioning by society from an early age, that we succumb to the illusion that we are really capable of perceiving the phenomonal world objectively.

for you and most of the religious maybe, it seems to me transcendental idealism is just another way of trying to make the irrational seem rational.

Politics and education are distorted in most countries due to the belief in the illusion of an objectively existing reality as perceived through the senses and mind.

kennyjc put it clear enough, your subjective BS, should be kept in your head.
what a completely irrational way of putting things, twilight zone time.
what I like to know is if your so sure, that it's all a matrix, how or what do you compare it with. what other objective/ or in your case illusionally objective reality.
reality is simply that, reality.
there is no other reality.

 

[Diogenes' Dog]

Kant's thinking is we can only experience the phenomenal world (what we perceive via our senses), whereas the noumenal world (the world that gives rise to our experience) remains always unknowable.

To think of reality as being what WOULD be experienced from some non-existent noumenal objective viewpoint is just not how it is. Our reality IS what we subjectively experience. This isn't just for the religious - it was Heidegger who coined the term Dasein (our "being in the world") and developed this as a secular philosophy, borrowing from Kant and Kierkegaard.

 

[redarmy11]

If the "parodies" I listed above are "oversimplistic" it's perhaps because they are relatively new religions and haven't had the benefit of 1000s of years to develop. Does this make them invalid and a belief in God, Buddah, etc. valid? Who are you to decide that the tenets of these religions are "nonsensical"? What are your grounds for dismissing them so?

 

[litewave]

Without empirical evidence to base the decision on how can you judge the validity of your beliefs?

If you ever loved someone, how can you judge the validity of your love?

your subjective BS, should be kept in your head.

Perhaps you should say this to someone who tells you they love you.

 

[Light Travelling]

so let me understand this in laymans terms, you and me are both looking at a tree, using all our sense, I see and feel a tree, but you see a metal girder with wire branches. so even though I can smell and touch and see the wood, and even hear and taste it if I wish,

We have five senses that detect different frequencies of oscillations. Now not all frequencies and oscillations are detectable by these five senses only a very limited range. Once detected these streams of fairly arbitary information make their way to the brain.
The mind then takes this info and turns it inside out and upside down and creates a picture for us of what it calls the real physical world. We get solid objects , colours and empty space - but is space empty , no its as full of particles as are solid objects. and are objects solid, no their not they have alsmost as much empty space as....empty space. what the mind does is conceptualise the information it receives and creates a 'real' world of objects and people. But is that what reality objectively is - no its a conceptual construct of the mind... and thats all you experience of 'reality', the concepts and perceptions of a mind thats only given incomplete and partial data to work with.

Can you imagine trying to do a scientific experiment and only inputting half the data to an analytical compyter program and then trusting 100% the result that comes out - of course not. But thats exactly what you expect your mind to do when it creates your picture of reality for you ... and you accept the first result it gives at face value... now that is what seems illogical to me.

I can never experience it, well what else am I doing with it. .

You are experincing it - subjectively. Your experinece of green is not the same as my experince of green. We both know what green is because when we were young someone pointed to grass and said that is green - but do we both see the same thing as green? - we can never know.

Why do some people prefer green and others prefer blue - because they expeience those colours differently. If they didn't everyone would have the same favourite colour and food etc. - senses are subjective

We can only ever experince subjectively. Objective experience is a myth

 

[redarmy11]

If you ever loved someone, how can you judge the validity of your love?

By having that love returned in words and in actions. By being able to ask questions and receive answers that assuage any doubts. In contrast, Gods speak to no-one but the terminally delusional. I would find it difficult to love someone that I couldn't see, hear or speak to. That kind of long-distant relationship just would't work for me, especially if I haven't even got my loved one's phone number.

Beeeeep... Hi God, it's Alan. This is my 7th message today. Why aren't you returning my calls??

P.S. Would someone care to tell me what makes the "parodies" I listed above "nonsensical"?

P.P.S. In comparing one's love of God to human love, I'm just wondering: do some Christians want to have sex with God? To have little divine babies? Or does it operate on a higher level than that? I'm just curious..

 

[Diogenes' Dog]

By having that love returned in words and in actions. By being able to ask questions and receive answers that assuage any doubts. In contrast, Gods speak to no-one but the terminally delusional. I would find it difficult to love someone that I couldn't see, hear or speak to. That kind of long-distant relationship just would't work for me, especially if I haven't even got my loved one's phone number.

Beeeeep... Hi God, it's Alan. This is my 7th message today. Why aren't you returning my calls??

The quality of love is the same as the quality of relationship with God. Martin Buber coined the term "I-Thou" for the state of being in relationship with someone (and also with God). One's whole self is absorbed in the contact, which is unbounded. This contrasts with I-It, which is how we see things (or people) as objectified, outside of ourselves.

God answers (though often in "mysterious ways"), and returns love in actions (or sometimes in "lucid thoughts" or realisations). It is a relationship, but of the mind not the sensations.

P.S. Would someone care to tell me what makes the "parodies" I listed above "nonsensical"?

Can't you guess?
Both the FSM and IPU are discrete entities. God is not an entity but eternal being, transpersonal and transendental reality, the essence and origin of all, the "mystery of mysteries" encountered in the human soul.

The other reason (as I said previously), is the FSM and IPU belong to an atheistic objectivised rationalistic view of "reality", but with an irrational belief tacked on. This makes them facile, as it misrepresents the relational way theists see the world, and encounter God.

Religion is to life what being a music lover is to sound. Some people are tone deaf - there is no way you can prove to them that your experience of music is real.

P.P.S. In comparing one's love of God to human love, I'm just wondering: do some Christians want to have sex with God? To have little divine babies? Or does it operate on a higher level than that? I'm just curious..

Cor blimey mate, it's much better than sex - you're missing out there! Take a look at... this!

 

[audible]

Kant's thinking is we can only experience the phenomenal world (what we perceive via our senses), whereas the noumenal world (the world that gives rise to our experience) remains always unknowable.

compared with what.

To think of reality as being what WOULD be experienced from some non-existent noumenal objective viewpoint is just not how it is. Our reality IS what we subjectively experience.

so I'm not typing this I'm imagining it, I might even not be sitting at my desk, I could be blob, imagining everything.

Perhaps you should say this to someone who tells you they love you.

love is a chemical reaction.

The mind then takes this info and turns it inside out and upside down and creates a picture for us of what it calls the real physical world. We get solid objects , colours and empty space - but is space empty , no its as full of particles as are solid objects. and are objects solid, no their not they have alsmost as much empty space as....empty space. what the mind does is conceptualise the information it receives and creates a 'real' world of objects and people. But is that what reality objectively is - no its a conceptual construct of the mind... and thats all you experience of 'reality', the concepts and perceptions of a mind thats only given incomplete and partial data to work with.

it creates a picture, so my reality is totally different from yours, I could be imagining you, so the matrix was'nt just a film, it was an imagined case study of my life, because none of you exist I've imagined you all, am I right so far, dont bother to reply because I've only to imagine your answer, cause you dont exist anywhere else, but my head.

You are experincing it - subjectively. Your experinece of green is not the same as my experince of green. We both know what green is because when we were young someone pointed to grass and said that is green - but do we both see the same thing as green? - we can never know.

you dont exist, your just a product of my mind, so green is just green, what colour you see it is irrelevant, your a non entity.

Why do some people prefer green and others prefer blue - because they expeience those colours differently. If they didn't everyone would have the same favourite colour and food etc. - senses are subjective

they dont they all prefer green, I the only person/thing, your just imagined.

We can only ever experince subjectively. Objective experience is a myth

no you are a myth.

what a complete and utter crock of shit.

 

[redarmy11]

The quality of love is the same as the quality of relationship with God. Martin Buber coined the term "I-Thou" for the state of being in relationship with someone (and also with God). One's whole self is absorbed in the contact, which is unbounded.

I'd say the fact that you can't see, hear, smell, touch, taste, kiss or fuck him places certain limitations on the relationship.

God answers (though often in "mysterious ways"),

ie, in ways that can't be seen, heard, touched, etc. Relatives of the dying call their loved one's sudden recovery 'miraculous', praising God and saying that their "prayers have been answered". Relatives of those who lose the fight don't stop to question why God has failed to answer their prayers, and simply say that it's God's will, and that he "works in mysterious ways". He can't lose really, can he?

and returns love in actions

Give me an example of where God can be seen to have acted. Just one will suffice - preferably something with a 'wow!' factor that will convince even those like me, who are of sceptical bent, that He is active amongst us.

(or sometimes in "lucid thoughts" or realisations). It is a relationship, but of the mind not the sensations.

God talks to all kinds of nutters in their heads. He tells most of them to murder prostitutes.

Can't you guess? Both the FSM and IPU are discrete entities. God is not an entity but eternal being, transpersonal and transendental reality, the essence and origin of all, the "mystery of mysteries" encountered in the human soul.

No he isn't. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is (the Invisible Pink Unicorn, by contrast, is clearly a facile parody). I am as sure of this as you are of your beliefs, and with just as much evidence to support it. Just because I belong to a minority cult whilst you happen to subscribe to the dominant religious paradigm doesn't make you any more right than me.

The other reason (as I said previously), is the FSM and IPU belong to an atheistic objectivised rationalistic view of "reality", but with an irrational belief tacked on. This makes them facile, as it misrepresents the relational way theists see the world, and encounter God.

How dare you call my beliefs facile. My faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster isn't at all objectivised or rationalistic - it is a melding of mind and soul that feels, to me, intuitively right. If it is facile, it is only as facile as your belief that everything was created by this 'God' of yours by undisclosed means. When it was quite clearly created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster with His Noodly Appendage. If you can't perform the necessary leap of faith that would allow you to recognise this, please don't merely dismiss me as facile again - prove me wrong.

Religion is to life what being a music lover is to sound. Some people are tone deaf - there is no way you can prove to them that your experience of music is real.

You're perfectly entitled to your highly subjective views on music but your equally subjective belief in God as the originator of the universe and all things in it jars badly with the recorded data - and without the data, I repeat: how are we to establish the validity of competing beliefs?

 

[Sarkus]

Can you imagine trying to do a scientific experiment and only inputting half the data to an analytical compyter program and then trusting 100% the result that comes out - of course not. But thats exactly what you expect your mind to do when it creates your picture of reality for you ... and you accept the first result it gives at face value... now that is what seems illogical to me.

This is rubbish.
What we expect our brain to do is to give us a view of reality that is useable within the contexts of our existence and that enables us to survive as a species.

No, we can not see in infra-red. But we do not need to to survive.
We can not see detail to the absolute smallest level - but we do not need to.

We put in 50% of reality - we get out 50% of reality.
But for us that is sufficient to survive.


However, the purpose of science, or reason and of logic, and especially with regard to the evidence, is to limit the subjectivity of the observations. That is why science requires repeatable and measurable evidence in order to support its claims / theories etc.

Otherwise "science" wouldn't exist and we would just have people shouting about whose subjective experience is better.

A tree could no longer be called a tree - as not everyone would "experience" it as such, and everyone could call it something unique to them.

We can only ever experince subjectively. Objective experience is a myth

Who mentioned "Objective experience"?

The purpose of science is to minimise the subjectivity of the experience / output of the experiment.
Only then can we understand clearly and unambiguously what is going on.

And science, and the scientific method, ensure that this subjectivity is minimised - which is why it deals with theory and "scientific fact" - which will never be 100% certain.

 

[Cyperium]

I think atheists' point is that there is no more justification for putting your faith in an invisible, intangible God than there is for believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Without empirical evidence to base the decision on how can you judge the validity of your beliefs?

The validity of faith do not need to be judged! We don't need empirical evidence the way we need it for deciding physical things.

As it is said in the Bible:
Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, the substance of things not seen.

Otherwise we would not know anything that we wouldn't have seen with our own eyes. Otherwise we couldn't believe anyone if they told us what had happened to them, otherwise we wouldn't be able to trust old men when they gave us advice. Would we need evidence for everything, we wouldn't survive.

Therefor faith is the ability of us to look into the unknown, in hope of a better way, since we are limited creatures. This gives us the oppertunity of ever advancing, ever growing. Even in individual scale faith is needed to grow and to advance in life.

That we have faith in God is because that matters so much for us, because otherwise things would not bear full meaning and we would have to close our eyes, because we couldn't tolerate the sight of a world without meaning. In other words, we would be dead inside, constantly moving to keep us alive, constantly grasping everything. No time for afterthought, or perhaps afterthought in itself is a bad move then.

Faith is a beautiful thing, where things we have faith in show themselves in the world we see, in different manners, so in a way faith is self-supporting, collecting meaning to support itself. All over the world we see a stamp, and it says; "Made by God".

 

[geeser]

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill."
H.L. Mencken

Due to the fact that there is no evidence to support the validity of Xianity/islam, and that there is such a huge amount of evidence directly conflicting with Xianity/islam, the word "delusion" is more appropriately applied where the word "faith" is much more commonly used. Having a delusion is believing something is true even though there is no affirmative evidence to support a contention of belief, and/or the existence of significant evidence to the contrary of the professed belief. xians/muslim have no "faith in God", they have a delusion of God. They are, quite factually, mentally ill.
the preacher.


There has never existed in the world anything more intensely vile, contemptuous, and dangerous to freedom, peace and progress as deeply held blind faith in organized religions and holy dogmas. The Christian dominated society of this country has painted a lovely picture of the faithful flock and how deserving faithful people are of praise and respect. Beneath the Xian whitewash is the plain hard truth. If a person treated his children half as cruelly as the supposedly divine and omnibenevolent Judeo-Christian blood god has treated his children, the Christians would be out to give him the death penalty. Does belief in cruel gods create cruel people, or do cruel people simply make their gods in their own likeness?
mis t highs http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=40015&page=1&pp=20

 

[spidergoat]

I think I was an atheist first for subjective reasons (feelings, faith) before I had solid reasons for it. I just suspected that most people were full of crap and believe stupid things because they are weak and don't read.

I'm still not sure if there is any objective truth, only degrees of certainty less than %100.

 

[Diogenes' Dog]

I think I was an atheist first for subjective reasons (feelings, faith) before I had solid reasons for it. I just suspected that most people were full of crap and believe stupid things because they are weak and don't read.

William James in Varieties of Relgious Experience notes that some people have a deep inner certainty that God exists (though they may deny it), while others have a similar certainty that there is no God. Sounds like you are the second spidergoat. It is not that theists read less or are weak or stupid... Many great minds are/were also theists, or at least had a strong sense of the spiritual (e.g. Einstein).

I'm still not sure if there is any objective truth, only degrees of certainty less than %100.

...but is meaningful "reality" only that which can be demonstrated using objective empirical data (logical empiricism), or is it the sum of our experience (phenomenology)? If the former, many things we value are seemingly not real, if the latter, then spiritual experiences are a part of meaningful reality.